900 Crowd Into New Lecture Hall To Hear Auden Recite Own Poetry

Hooting, screaming, caterwauling, over 900 students flooded suddenly out of Emerson D Wednesday and raced vigorously towards the New Lecture Hall with the peculiarly startling cry of "audenaudenauden."

The recipient of this gratitude, affection, and inspiration eased down into a chair in St. Clair's, with the summary, "It was rather frightening."

No Money In It

"It is almost impossible to make a living out of honest creative writing," Auden replied to questioning. "Nobody really ever has, although I suppose it might be done. There are the inevitable problems of family and the pressure always to make more money.

"The best thing to do is to hold some other job, such as teaching, so that one has an income independent of one's writings. But if you must try to write for a living, it is quite possible to do on assignment a piece of work you wouldn't otherwise do--and still not be ashamed of it. But it does irritate one to sell a morning's work for $300 and a month's work for $20.

When asked if he believed his work could be adequately translated to another language, Auden commented that he is currently editing a book of translation for Viking. He added, "In translation a man's work must be re-made in another language and re-done in each generation. Hauptmann is well translated, but Goe the very badly, and I've never seen a good translation of Baudelaire."

Upon the expression of a desire to travel, Auden remarked that "the people of England are tired and all Europe is completely exhausted. Everything we have known on the continent is gone; the destruction has been mental as well as physical."

Learn Reading Young"

"When one is a child, one has got to have books around the house and read and be read to," he stated. "The child must learn that reading books is fun or else the man thinks that reading is just something he must do for college courses. It is terribly difficult to start after a ceriain age."

Auden noted that many students today appear to take an especially gloomy attitude towards their future. "Look forward to the next six hours," he advised, "rather than the next ten years. In looking ten years ahead the worst possible things are always about to happen."